[8-5-12] THINGS HAPPENING. No, it's not final release time or anywhere near it, but I WILL have some good news pretty soon to make up for the long quiet stretch. Just give me a week or two to get through a busy work stint and then, BLAM! Stuff!

[12-14-11] Holy moly, technical improvements for modders (and myself/my sanity)! I made a post (it sucks) about some of the new features in store for anyone who wants to mire their minds in the world of custom EXU2 maps/pawns/mutators/whatever in the future. Some screenshots and a brief overview of some of the upcoming tools are available.

[11-21-11] Here's something different! I have recorded a complete playthrough of one of the EXU2 maps, complete with useless and unfunny developer commentary that you will probably just turn off! Map 10 is the pick this time, as it has gotten a pretty huge makeover since Demo 4. Not all maps are getting this treatment visually, but I have definitely improved the gameplay across the board, too. Yes, again. It's just a never-ending stream of fucking improvements around here, god damn

[9-16-11] It's video time again! More discord, set in CTF-Grudge, is available for your viewing displeasure. Notable changes include the new Clusterfucker primary fire, tons of new sounds, and improved effects. Can you spot the new pupae lunging behaviors?

Similarly, in older (but far better) news, EXU2's campaign soundtrack is now powered almost entirely by Cybernetika! He's given me the green light to use his music in the campaign, and what's in place so far (almost all of the maps have his music now, save for a few, like the ones that use Nicolas Eymerich's music) is amazing. When the final comes, you will be blown away by the sound. I can't even begin to express how happy I am about this.

Anyway, news has been sparse but progress hasn't been, though as usual, there's still tons of work to do. But the work IS getting done at the best pace I can manage! Hopefully I'll complete some maps pretty soon. More on that later.

Coop bugs: these are mostly caused by the engine itself, not EXU, and most of them are unfixable. For your first run through the game, we recommend you play offline so you have a (mostly... hopefully) bug-free experience.

Your second Piddledoper disappears after switching maps. This has been happening since the beginning, but I enjoy this unintentional balance mechanism, so it won't be fixed. Hell is messing with you.

Nasty, unfixable HOM early in Map 8.

If you use EXUOpenGL.drv as your renderer, set bUseS3TC=True in your preferences. EXUOpenGL (and possibly Chris Dohnal's OpenGL renderer) has a bug in it where it will downsample any 512x512 textures to 256 if S3TC is turned off. Enabling it will prevent this behavior while we fix the bug / find a better OpenGL renderer. D3D8/9/10 doesn't seem to have this problem.

RMusicPlayer: After setting the volume, the slider resets after loading saves/switching levels if you don't restart UT first. Simply choose the volume you want, save, and restart UT. It will stick until you make another change. Repeat as necessary.

*** If you encounter anything not on this list, let me know ASAP!

Last edited by Buff Skeleton on 09 Oct 2012, 15:18, edited 127 times in total.

The Translocator: From UT. Allows you to telefrag most enemies and explore out-of-reach areas.

Somehow, you wind up aboard a wreckage that happens to look a whole lot like the Vortex Rikers--you know, that prison ship that crash-landed on an alien world centuries ago?--but something's obviously wrong with it, because there are... things... in it that weren't there before. Things that look rather demonic. And they are pissed off.

As you come to, you find out that you must have gone to Hell, which is the only reasonable way to explain why everything wants to kill you. So you try to figure out just why the hell Hell is as fucked up as it is, and why you are strangely able to find powerful weapons, ammunition, and items to assist you.

Once you get outside, you see Hell in all its fiery, demonic glory. And oh boy is it full of nasty little critters that just want to ruin your day--but will you let that happen? FUCK NO, you have some guns and shit! Time to... uh... well, fight your way out of Hell, I guess. What other choice do you have? What do you have to lose? And who are those other people shooting demons with high-tech weaponry?

GOOD QUESTION!

It's up to you to stay alive long enough to sort things out and, if possible, escape. Or at least find a nice butte or strategically-viable place to set up a fortress for eternity, provided you figure out a way to grow some of that weird fruit...

EXU, which stands for Excessive Unreal, is the broadest term possible that refers to this... thing I've created. EXU1 is an absurd singleplayer campaign set in heavily-modified Unreal 1 maps, featuring massive hordes of fucked up creatures, bizarre scripted sequences, and the hilariously overpowered Excessive UT weapon arsenal, which is where the mod gets its name. EXU1 is fun in its own way, but is old and dusty compared to EXU2.

EXU2 is based on the same premises as EXU1--tons of insanity, overpowered guns, hordes of monsters, etc.--but with a, uh, higher quality level and lots more attention to detail, polish, and an actual story. All new weapons, HUNDREDS of new creatures, and EXTREMELY-heavily-modified Unreal maps are what EXU2: Batshit Insane has to offer.

Similarly, EXU2 is both a single-player campaign AND a heavily-customizable creature, gun, health, and item mod. You can either play straight through the Batshit Insane campaign, or you can load up a game of UT with MonsterSpawn and have all kinds of hilarity ensue with EXU2 stuff. The included text files contain excruciating detail about how to set all of these things up.

Last edited by Buff Skeleton on 29 Dec 2011, 17:30, edited 31 times in total.

Unpack EXU2-BI-Demo4.zip to your \UnrealTournament\ directory. Ensure your archiver preserves the folder structure from the archive. Open EXU2-Files List.txt to see where all your files should go if any are misplaced.

Start UT. You should see an "Activate Oldskool" button somewhere if you have just installed it. Do this.

Go to New Singleplayer Game and select EXU2: Batshit Insane from the dropdown list. Select it and click start. BAM, YOU ARE IN

Multiplayer/botmatch games:

Install MonsterSpawn and edit MonsterSpawn.ini to your preferences. Feel free to browse the EXU changelog or summons list to see what sounds like fun and add it to your MonsterSpawn.ini.

Start a practice session and open the Mutators window. Add MonsterSpawn if you want, y'know, monsters.

You can also mix and match mutators or use some of EXU's other mutators, such as EXU Replace and EXU: UT Gun Swap. If you do this, I recommend using EXU Health Charger.

Start the game. Waves of monsters will spawn in according to your MonsterSpawn.ini settings. You can also scale their health and damage there.

Singleplayer games:

Though it would more-than-likely make almost any SP map way too easy (or hard), you can play with EXU stuff in SP too using Oldskool's SP Mutators. Go to your Oldskool properties.

On the Singleplayer tab, mash the SP Mutators button (mash it hard). Load whatever mutators you desire, but be aware of how fucked up the SP maps will probably become as a result.

Start a new game and select whichever map or map pack you want to play. The mutators you selected should be loaded and modify the gameplay--for better or for worse.

Uninstallation:

Delete the files listed in the Files List.

Seek therapy.

The manual has a ton of info about this. Here are the main points:

The D3D8 and below renderers WILL NOT WORK with EXU; update to D3D9 (or better) or EXUOpenGL, both of which are included. (Or you could use D3D10, or even 11 I think is out now, damn.) This is because the stock D3D renderer sucks balls and cannot handle 512x512 textures (which is fucking retarded; even the SOFTWARE RENDERER can do that). D3D8 and below also have issues; avoid using these, as they are unsupported and the extro map will crash.

Configure your renderer settings according to the UTGLR settings page or by using my own OpenGL settings. This is a guide, and these settings may or may not work well for your hardware configuration. I won't be responsible for any GPU meltdowns!

If you use EXUOpenGl.drv, set bUseS3TC to TRUE or else it will downsample any 512x512 textures to 256. This is a bug in the renderer and will be fixed / replaced with a better renderer in the future, but enabling S3TC textures will prevent the downsampling.

Note that RMusicPlayer has its own Volume Controller. It's under the Mod menu item from the main UT menu.

Do not use FMOD if you have music/audio problems. Use Galaxy instead. Not helping? Contact me and I'll see what I can do!

Bind keys to cycle inventory with Oldskool

Bind a key to use inventory

Ensure the default (+ and -) keys for increasing and decreasing the HUD are bound

Bind Quicksave and Quickload to a key

Set up your renderer to make sure everything looks nice and runs smoothly; set appropriate brightness, mouse sensitivity, etc. This page is good for setting up OpenGL or D3D8: http://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/

Be sure to check out the Technical Testing >> Particle Systems room in the menu map and adjust your particle density if you get bad performance in there

Strongly Recommended: disable Permanent Decals and Permanent Carcasses even if you have a PC made within the last couple of years! This old engine doesn't like having too much piled up.

bad newsGame and the PC too completely crashed due to a Demon Flare in the Weapon tutorial area, but -goodnews- only one time.

Anyway fuck Shrakith'a, Xidia and whatever else, this owns. Best presentation ever. Also the first map looks so cool now.

--------------MSVCR71.dll

This is the file that UT.exe seems to need. The error pop-up appears suddenly in the game, and it seems to be happening in the EXU2 maps, and only for one time per UT game. Strangely, this doesn't crash the game, but it's annoying, and I don't know what else it will cause.

RavenMp3player seems to be the cause but the problem doesn't bother me much.

- Flare blew up in my face after I tried to switch to the Piddledoper- Got killed by an exploding cow- Got my face kicked in by respectively a Fatass Mercenary, Flak Tentacle and Stupid Flare Magician- Tried to throw a Barrel o'fun down the cliff edge in NyLeve only to have it explode in my face